made a good case for his modern version of the
Grand Tour, and he gave them something of his intellectual enthusiasm
for the distances and views, the cities and seas, the multitudinous wide
spectacle of the world he was to experience. He had been reading about
Benares and North China. As he talked Amanda, who had been animated at
first, fell thoughtful and silent. And then it was discovered that the
night was wonderfully warm and the moon shining. They drifted out into
the garden, but Mr. Rathbone-Sanders was suddenly entangled and drawn
back by Mrs. Wilder and the young woman from London upon some technical
point, and taken to the work-table in the corner of the dining-room to
explain. He was never able to get to the garden.

Benham found himself with Amanda upon a side path, a little isolated by
some swaggering artichokes and a couple of apple trees and so forth from
the general conversation. They cut themselves off from the continuation
of that by a little silence, and then she spoke abruptly and with the
quickness of a speaker who has thought out something to say and fears
interruption: "Why did you come down here?"

"I wanted to see you before I went."

"You disturb me. You fill me with envy."

"I didn't think of that. I wanted to see you again."

"And then you will go off round the world, you will see the Tropics, you
will see India, you will go into Chinese cities all hung with vermilion,
you will climb mountains. Oh! men can do all the splendid things. Why do
you come here to remind me of it? I have never been anywhere, anywhere
at all. I never shall go anywhere. Never in my life have I seen a
mountain. Those Downs there--look at them!--are my highest. And while
you are travelling I shall think of you--and think of you...."

"Would YOU like to travel?" he asked as though that was an extraordinary
idea.

"Do you think EVERY girl wants to sit at home and rock a cradle?"

"I never thought YOU did."

"Then what did you think I wanted?"

"What DO you want?"

She held her arms out widely, and the moonlight shone in her eyes as she
turned her face to him.

"Just what you want," she said; "--THE WHOLE WORLD!

"Life is like a feast," she went on; "it is spread before everybody and
nobody must touch it. What am I? Just a prisoner. In a cottage garden.
Looking for ever over a hedge. I should be happier if I couldn't look.
I remember once, only a little time ago, there was a cheap excursion to
London. Our on